Battle: SEMrush Vs Ahrefs! Which One You Should You Pick?

You’re lucky because you found this post where I am going to compare both the amazing SEO Tools side by side.

SEMrush and Ahrefs, both names have taken whenever we talk about SEO Tools. Right?

Both the tools address as the no.1 SEO tool whenever you read content around these tools.

I am using SEMrush from the starting days of my blog and even I used Ahrefs for a long time, So, I thought to combine all my experience for both the amazing tools and find out which one actually deserves the no.1 position.

Popular bloggers are using any of both tools, some use Ahrefs and some SEMrush. So, you can’t say that one works great and another doesn’t.

It totally depends on their comfort while using the tool. Some find Ahrefs easy to use whereas some find SEMrush.

So, without further ado, let’s jump to the side by side comparison of SEMrush vs Ahrefs.

Introducing The Both Players

I am going to compare the SEMrush and Ahrefs, this comparison will help you to pick the best tool for your blog/website/brand.

So, we have SEMrush and Ahrefs two players in this comparison post.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a killer SEO tool when it comes to spying competitors and stealing their rankings. If you have the SEMrush in your toolkit then it will become a piece of cake for you to outrank your competitors.

My Secret Weapon To Dominate SEO

SEMrush is the tool that I’m using since 4 years back to ensure my blog’s growth on SERP. It really makes easy to perform keyword research, technical site audit, backlink audit, stealing backlinks from competitors, spying competitors and much more.

Dashboard Comparison Of Both Tools

SEMrush Dashboard

SEMrush has an intuitive dashboard from where you can access almost all the tools that SEMrush offers. You can keep your eye on your as well as your competitors’ domain performance.

You can add your and your competitors’ domain to keep tracking performance, you will get a Site Audit widget where you will be seeing the health of your site and easily get notified about the issues which started affecting your site as they occur.

Apart from this, there are many other widgets on SEMrush, like:

On-Page SEO Checker: This widget will help you to analyze your pages that are appearing in Google SERPs.

Social Media Tracker: It will show your social media engagements and you can easily compare them to your competitors.

Backlink Audit: Once you do backlink audit using SEMrush, Backlink audit widget will show you the toxic domains that are hurting your backlink profile.

Position Tracking: Once you set up the Position tracking, you will see the ranking changes directly on the dashboard.

Brand Monitoring: You will be notified about your brand mentions all over the internet.

Organic Traffic Insights: Connect to your GA and GSC account to see the traffic insights of your website.

Ahrefs Dashboard

Ahrefs dashboard is quite easy to understand for the beginners because it doesn’t display a lot of tools on the dashboard.

You will be able to add your project to keep monitoring the performance of your and your competitors’ domain. Ahrefs will show you DR, Referring domains, backlinks, organic traffic and keywords for each project that you add on Ahrefs.

If you are a beginner, then Ahrefs has a simple to understand dashboard. You will not need to go through the tons of options to understand their use.

Winner: If you are beginner, just starting your blog or website. For that, you need a simple interface then Afrefs is good for you. You may be confused by seeing tons of options/widgets at the dashboard.

Whereas if you are an intermediate or expert then you must go with the SEMrush, it’s a bit tough to understand all the features and tool that SEMrush offers but once you got that, you will get most out of it.

Look At The Pricing Of Both The Tools

Pricing matter a lot when you are at an initial stage of your blog. You always want to save as many bucks you can.

Let’s start with the SEMrush:

SEMrush Pricing

SEMrush has three plans, Pro, Guru and Business.

Which plan suits you is depends on your requirements. But if you are a beginner blogger or startup then you can go with the SEMrush Pro plan.

SEMrush Pro Plan: This is the starter plan of SEMrush which costs you $99.95 for one month, but if you buy it for the entire year, it will cost you $83.28 per month. You can save 16% if you buy the SEMrush Pro plan for one year.

This plan is the best fit for the freelancers, startups and in-house marketers who have the low-budget.

In the SEMrush pro plan, you will get:

10,000 results per report

3000 reports per day

250 keyword metrics updates per month

Up to 3 projects

500 Keywords to track (with daily updates)

5 Scheduled PDF reports

SEMrush Guru Plan: Second plan for SEMrush which cost $199.95 per month and if you buy for one year, it will cost $166.62 per month. This plan is the best fit for you if you are a growing agency or small business.

In SEMrush guru plan, you will get:

30,000 results per report

5,000 reports per day

1000 keyword metrics updates per month

Up to 15 projects

1500 Keywords to track (with daily updates)

20 Scheduled PDF reports

Content Marketing Platform

Branded PDF reports

SEMrush Business Plan: The most expensive plan for SEMrush which cost $399.95 per month and $333.28 per month if you buy for one year.

This is the best fit for the big agencies, businesses and E-Commerce projects.

In the SEMrush business plan, you will get:

50,000 results per report

10,000 reports per day

5000 keyword metrics updates per month

Up to 25 projects

5,000 Keywords to track (with daily updates)

50 Scheduled PDF reports

Content Marketing Platform

Branded PDF reports

White label PDF reports

Google Data Studio Integration

Let’s look at the Ahrefs pricing to find out which one is the cheapest.

Ahrefs Advanced: Ahrefs Advanced is the second plan of Ahrefs which cost $399 per month.

Here are the features of the Ahrefs Advanced Plan:

Access for the 3 users only

You can add up to 25 projects

You can track 5,000 Keywords

1.25 million crawled credits per month

250 Domains research allowed per day

2,000 URL research allowed per day

You can view the 50,000 rows on each report

Ahrefs Agency: The most expensive plan of Ahrefs which cost $999 per month.

Following are the features of the Ahrefs Agency plan:

Access for the 5 users only

You can add up to 100 projects

You can track 10,000 Keywords

2.25 million crawled credits per month

1,000 Domains research allowed per day

5,000 URL research allowed per day

You can view the 1,00,000 rows on each report

These are the four plans that Ahrefs offer along with their cost. Ahrefs offers two months free with each plan if you buy that for the entire year.

Winner: The winner is, in term of pricing, Ahrefs. Because they have the variety of the plans so it is affordable for every stage of users. Their starting plan is approx $1 cheap than the SEMrush starting plan. And you can get 2 months free if you buy any of their plans for one year which is the more discounted price for annual plan compare than the SEMrush.

Availability Of Free Plan & Trial

If the tool you are going to purchase has a free plan or trial then you will be able to test the tool for a short period and decide whether to buy or not!

It gives you a chance to explore the tool before paying for that.

Free Plan

SEMrush has the free plan available which you can use to test its features and tools but the access will be restricted. You will get very limited access of SEMrush tools and ability to view the reports, here you go:

How To Claim SEMrush 14-Day Free Trial?

Here are the steps that you need to follow to get SEMrush 14-Day free trial offer.

Step: 1 First you need to click on this Special Link, it will send you to SEMrush & StayMeOnline partnership page where you will see the option to claim SEMrush 14-Day Trial.

Click on the button “Start your free 14 day trial now” you can see on the page.

Step: 2 You will see a new account registration form just after clicking the Start your free 14 day trial now button.

Enter your email and choose a password to create a new SEMrush account.

Step: 3 On the next page, you will be seeing a checkout page where you need to add your credit card. But don’t worry, you won’t be charged until the next 14-Days.

You don’t need to enter your SEMrush coupon code here, because the code is already added and you can see it on the below image.

And you can see the total charge is also $0.00. However, $1 can be deducted just for verification.

Step: 4 Scroll down and you will see some fields where you need to enter your billing details.

When you are done with all the fields, click on the Place the Order button. That’s it! You claimed the SEMrush free 14-day trial.

Let’s see the free trial option in Ahrefs…

Ahrefs has a 7-day trial option but it’s not free! You will have to pay 7$ for a 7-day free trial to test the Ahrefs tools and other features.

You can take the 7-day trial of Ahrefs Lite and Standard plan, you will get the all the features that plan offers in the Ahrefs trial.

Winner: The winner is quite clear, SEMrush. SEMrush has a free version where you can test the basic tools of SEMrush with limited access. Whereas, Ahrefs doesn’t have the existence of the free plan.

SEMrush offers a free trial where you can use the SEMrush for free for 7-day, 14-day or even 30-day which is a good option for customers who are willing to buy but want to test the tool first before paying.

Which One Is Good For Keyword Research, SEMrush Or Ahrefs?

When you come to blogging or SEO! Keyword research is some of the first words you heard.

Keyword research plays a crucial role in the growth of a blog on SERPs. So, the tool you are going to invest in should be good in keyword research.

Let’s look at both the tools to find out which one makes keyword research easy for beginners as well as for experts to find profitable keyword easily.

SEMrush

You can easily start keyword research just by entering your seed keyword for which you want to find related keywords in the box which you can see on the dashboard.

Just after hitting the search, you will get the comprehensive visualized report for that particular keyword and some related keywords.

As I have highlighted in the below image, left side you will be seeing the Volume along with Keyword Difficulty, CPC and Ad. Competition.

Just beside that, you will also be seeing the Total Global Volume divided by the various countries. On the right side, you can get the Total no. of results on SERP and keyword Trend graph.

Just down a bit and you will see a box where you will be seeing the keyword variation, Question-related to your keyword and related keywords.

This will help you find a variety of related keywords to your seed keyword and filter out the low-competitive and high profitable keywords.

Just after this section, you will see a section called SERPs analysis. SEMrush will show you all the pages that are ranking for the keyword you searched for.

You will be seeing Page authority score, Ref. domains, backlinks, total search traffic driven to that page and URL keywords etc for each result.

This is the keyword overview visualized report which makes easy for you to get in-depth insights into the keyword you search for.

However, you can access the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool from the left side menu under the Keyword Analytics. Keyword Magic tool is a keyword research tool offered by SEMrush which makes too easy to find profitable keywords.

It makes easy for beginners to find the profitable keywords to write their content on to get rank fast and organic traffic.

It has the Advance Filter Options which makes easy to filter out the results and view only the rows that qualify for your requirement. It also has sorting options which you can use by clicking on the header of any column.

Ahrefs Keyword Explorer

Ahrefs known as one of the most used keyword research tools, it makes keyword research a lot easier.

You can access the Ahrefs keyword explorer tool from the Navigation menu.

On the next screen, you will be seeing a box where you can add multiple keywords to find their volume, KD, CPC etc. The good thing here is, you can search keywords for Youtube, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo and many other search engines whereas you don’t get this in SEMrush.

Also, You can import keywords through a CSV or TXT file which makes easy to perform bulk keyword research. And again, you don’t get this option in the SEMrush keyword magic tool.

Once you hit the search, you will get the visualized report for the given keyword.

Actually, SEMrush doesn’t show you the % of keyword difficulty rather you will get the KD according to the backlinks you will need to rank in the Top 10.

If the number of needed backlinks are high then it will be tough for you to rank for that keyword. Likewise, if the needed backlinks no. are low then it is easy to rank for that keyword.

As you can see in the below image.

There is a good feature in the Ahrefs, it will show you the average number of clicks top-ranked websites are getting organically.

Just scroll a bit down to see all the related keywords to your parent keyword that you searched for… There you will see keywords that contain the same terms, question keywords and additional related keywords that the top 10 results are ranking for.

Scroll down to the bottom, you will be seeing the SERP Overview section for the keyword you searched. You will get a quick insight into the top 10 results ranking for those keywords.

You will get the details like DR, UR, total backlinks, featured snipped, referring domains, traffic generated, people also search for, site links, keywords ranking for, volume and so one for all the top 10 results.

As like SEMrush, Ahrefs also offer the filtering and sorting options that will help you to filter out the result to find most-profitable keywords for you to write on.

On the Keyword Explorer, you will be seeing filtering option at the top and use the header sorting option to change the order of columns.

Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer makes it pretty easy to find easy to rank keywords using its easy to use keyword research interface.

Winner: Both the tools are great when it comes to keyword research. Both tools offer the same options and features which makes easy to find profitable keywords for your blog. So, both the tools are good in keyword research.

Which One Good For Performing Site Audit?

Performing the site audit will help you to know about the SEO errors which might affect your website SEO performance.

Both the tools offer a site audit tool which identifies and helps in resolving the SEO related issues on your site.

SEMrush Site Audit

When it comes to site audit, SEMrush makes it very easy. It shows you in-detailed insights of your site issues and errors that may be causing your site.

You can perform site audit for your site by adding the Project from the left-side menu.

SEMrush will show you the visualized report which really makes easy to understand the issues of your site. On the report, you will be seeing all the errors, warnings and notices which may affect your website SEO performance. It may down your ranking in SERPs just because of these errors.

Apart from the Error, SEMrush will also show you the Site health score of your website. As you can see my website got 80%.

SEMrush won’t only show you the errors and warnings, rather it will help you to fix them by showing the list of the pages which is causing the issue.

Once you came to know about the pages, you can easily fix them and in this, SEMrush will guide you how you can do this.

You can add the list of Errors, warnings and notices in the Issues tab.

SEMrush also allows you to assign tasks to your team or save them for later using the Send to Trello button as you can see in the above image.

For finding the culprit pages, click on any error in the Issues tab to see all the pages creating issues.

Ahrefs Site Audit

You can perform Site Audit just by clicking the “Site Audit” from the navigation menu.

On the next page, add a New Project(your domain) for crawling. Ahrefs will show you all the issues which might be affecting your site SEO and the health score.

My blog got 92% in Ahrefs site audit report.

Once you opened the Crawls report, you will get well insights about the issues and other important things of your site.

As you can see in the below image, you will get the errors, warnings and notices which might affect your site in future.

Scroll a bit down, you will see the top issues as per their harmfulness. You can click on the View All Issues to see other issues.

Click on the issues to see the affected pages and how you can fix them to improve your site SEO score.

Click on the View Affected URLs to see all the pages which are causing the issues.

Winner: I have used both the tools for performing site audit for my blog, both works good. But I found SEMrush a bit more good because it shows you in-depth results about your site performance in a far better-visualized form than Ahrefs.

Which One Has The Good Rank Tracking Tool?

Both the tools have the rank tracking tools that help you to know about the keywords rank tracking and their position in the SERPs.

SEMrush rank tracking tool named “Position Tracking” whereas Ahrefs’ named as the “Rank Tracker“, but both work same.

SEMrush Position Tracking

You can setup Position Tracking by adding your domain as the project from the left-side menu, same as Site Audit.

SEMrush will show you the position tracking report once you successfully set up the position tracking for your domain.

You will see Visibility, Estimated Traffic and Average Position graph. On the same page, you will see the keyword position distribution, you will easily get to know how many keywords are ranking in Top 3, Top 10 and so on. And this information will be presented as the graph also.

You will also be seeing the top keywords, positive and negative impact. The positive impact will help you to know about the keywords for which position are increased and negative will help you to know keywords which are not performing well.

You will also get the Top Competitors’ no. of keywords they are ranking for and their average position.

SEMrush will also show you the landing pages which are performing best in SERPs.

The best thing which I like about SEMrush position tracking tool, they update their data very frequently.

Ahrefs Rank Tracker

On the Ahrefs dashboard, click on the Rank Tracker at the top navigation menu. Click on + New Project button and add your domain to perform rank tracking.

You will need to add the keywords that you want to check rank for…

Ahrefs will show you the visibility score, average position and traffic for all the keywords you added while setting up the rank tracker for your domain.

And you will also be seeing the SERP features if you get for any keyword.

As like SEMrush, Ahrefs will also show you the keyword distributions. It will help you to know how many keywords are ranking in top 3, top 10 and so on.

Here is a downside of Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker tool, Ahrefs updates their database once or twice in every week. Whereas SEMrush updates very frequently.

Winner:SEMrush wins here, SEMrush has the good rank tracking tool in which they update their data very frequently. Whereas, Ahrefs updates once or twice in a week. SEMrush position tracking tool has few extra features as compare than Ahrefs rank tracker.

Which Is Good For Backlink Analysis?

The backlink analysis tool allows you to spy on your competitors and find out domains who are linking to them. Once you come to know who is linking to them, you can easily steal some backlinks by creating more in-depth content and outreaching them.

Both the tools have a backlink analysis tool which allows you to spy on your competitors’ backlinks. Let’s compare both to know which has the good one…

SEMrush Backlink Analysis Tool

You can access the SEMrush Backlink Analysis tool from the left side menu under the Domain Analysis.

Just after entering the domain you want to analyse backlink for, SEMrush will show you the result on the next page.

You will see the backlinks overview page for the domain you are analyzing backlinks of, you will get a visualized report of the backlinks of the domain.

You will see the Categories of Referring domains and Top Anchors of the domains they are getting backlinks from. There will be a lot more details on the overview.

Go to the Backlinks tab, You will see widgets at the top that will help you to understand the domain’s backlink profile, like total no. of backlinks, referring domains, backlink type and link attributes.

Scroll down and you will see every single backlink that domain has, you can export all the backlinks in a CVS or Excel file.

You can also filter all the list to see only Do-Follow backlinks that domain has, just by going in Follow tab.

There are a lot more options that SEMrush backlink link analysis tool has which can try yourself. Grab this SEMrush free 14-Day Trial and explore SEMrush without paying for it.

Ahrefs Backlink Analysis Tool

When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs offers a simple to use backlink analysis tool that will help you find the backlink sources of your competitors.

For performing backlink analysis, enter the domain you want to check backlink in the search box at the dashboard.

Ahrefs doesn’t have an exclusive tool for backlink analysis so you will get the backlink details of any domain you want, on the same domain overview page.

Ahrefs will also show you graphs of new & lost referring domains and backlinks to make it easy to understand.

You can click on the Backlinks at the right-side options to get backlink data. You will see each backlink pointing to the domain you searched for.

You can use the filter options at the top to filter the result. You can use to filter to see the do-follow links only and many other filter options.

Ahrefs will also show you the DR, UR of domains who are pointing to the domain you searched for and anchor text they are linking with.

Winner: When I looked closely into the backlink analysis tool of both the tools, I found that both are amazing. But SEMrush wins here with a slight edge because SEMrush offers an exclusive tool for backlink analysis whereas Ahrefs doesn’t have.

Which One Has The Good Content Explorer Tool?

Let’s see which one has the best content explorer tool…

SEMrush Topic Research Tool

SEMrush has a content explorer tool named Topic Research. You can easily find it on the left side menu.

Just need to enter the keyword or niche you want to find new content ideas around. SEMrush will show you all pages which are performing well in SEPR in 4 different views, card, explorer, overview and mind-map.

By default, SEMrush will show you the results in card view. However, you can change the view to any as per your comfort.

You can also use the “Trending subtopics first” toggle button to show the trending/well-performing topics first.

When you click on Show more on any card to want to see further details, you will get the Headlines of the pages that are performing well around that topic. You can also visit them to see what they have covered in their content.

You will also see Subtopic volume, difficulty and topic efficiency which really matter. Apart from this, on the right side, you will see questions that people are searching around that topic.

If you look at the bottom of any card, you will be seeing a related searches section where you can find the related terms people search about your topic in Google.

The way SEMrush organize result and show you in the visualized way really makes it easy to understand.

Ahrefs Content Explorer

Ahrefs Content Explorer tool will help you to find content ideas from the best performing content for a particular keyword or niche.

It will show you the list of all the best-performing pages for that specific topic along with DR, referring domains, organic traffic and some other tools.

You can view more insights related to any particular result just by clicking the Details button in the last column. It will show you the details in graph view, you will also get the total no. of backlinks that post has and easily know who is linking to them.

Ahrefs Content Explorer tool can be the best tool for you to find new content ideas when you are out of new content ideas.

Winner: Both tools are good when it comes to topic research, but I found SEMrush a bit better here because of its 4 different style of result view and few more features which Ahrefs doesn’t have.

Which One Has Good Support System?

Good support is must…

Not everyone is technical enough to understand the technical things, this is where they need a good support system.

So, if you are going to invest in a premium tool you always expect a strong support system from their side.

Let’s see which one in both tools has a good support system.

SEMrush Support System

SEMrush has tons of amazing features and understanding them in the first view is really really difficult, you might understand all at once if you are an expert.

But what about beginners who just took step-in, they need a good support system which can help them.

I couldn’t find any straightforward support link or button, or any chat support in SEMrush.

But yes, if you scroll to the bottom. You will get a Contact Us link at the footer of SEMrush.

On the Contact page, you will see three different types of support. If you are a customer, then you should go with Customer Support. This is for those who are having difficulty to use SEMrush.

You will see a contact form, which you can fill and ask your query to SEMrush team.

I know it is a bit harder, but the good thing is, you can except the response from their side in less than 12 hours.

Ahrefs Support System

Ahrefs offers live chat option to their customer…

You can easily get into touch with the Ahrefs team when you need any help using the live chat option on the bottom-right side.

You can get the instant solution(most of the time) of your queries using the Ahrefs live chat option.

Winner: This is quite clear here, Ahrefs has a good and fast support system compare than the SEMrush. Because Ahrefs is using the live chat option whereas SEMrush doesn’t have that.

What Do I Prefer To Use?

Well, it’s very tough to choose one out of both the amazing tools.

Both tools are amazing, but if I have to go with the one, I will surely choose SEMrush.

I am already using SEMrush from years back to do domain analysis, backlink audit, keyword research and so many other SEO tasks.

SEMrush offers 40+ advanced SEO tools which make a high impact in growing a brand’s online presence.

If you are a blogger and decided to go with a premium tool to grow your rankings, then SEMrush would be good for you. It has a free plan which you can start with and also get the free trial of SEMrush.

FAQ About SEMrush Vs Ahrefs Comparison

Here are some questions around SEMrush vs Ahrefs…

Which is better Ahrefs vs SEMrush?

Well, Both the tools are amazing when it comes to the best SEO tools and true competitors of each other. SEMrush and Ahrefs both have pros and cons, different interface. So, it depends on you which you feel comfortable working with.

What is SEMrush?

SEMrush is known as the no.1 SEO tool which is used by over 5 million people worldwide. It makes easy to find profitable keywords to write about and get ranked easily. It also helps in finding SEO related issues which might affect your site’s SEO. Apart from this, SEMrush has more than 40+ advanced SEO tools which help in growing online presence of brands and websites.

What are the best SEO Tools?

Here are some best SEO tools used by popular bloggers and brands:1. Ahrefs2. SEMrush3. Moz4. Ubersuggest5. KWFinder6. KeywordTool.io

Which one is cheap, Ahrefs or SEMrush?

If you look deeply, Ahrefs Lite plan is 1$ cheap than SEMrush Pro. And if you buy any plan of Ahrefs, you will get two months free.

Whereas buying SEMrush plan for one year, you can save 16%. So, Ahrefs is a bit cheap than SEMrush.

Is Ahrefs worth the money?

Ahrefs offers amazing SEO tools which make easy to gain good rankings and get huge traffic. Ahrefs lite plan starting from $99 per month but if you buy for one year then you will get two months free.

Conclusion

SEMrush and Ahrefs both the tools are amazing… And a true competitor of each other.

Choosing one out of both is completely depends on your comfort, SEMrush has a lot of amazing SEO tools in it and you can’t understand its 100% use in your first try.

Mostly beginners got confused when they first use SEMrush because of tons of tools and options. Whereas, Ahrefs has the simple to use interface which anyone can use easily without knowing technicality.

I will say it again, both are amazing and there is not much difference between them. However, you can try the free trial of both tools to test out which one is a good fit for you.

SEMrush offers a 7-Day trial, but you can extend it using my SEMrush 14-Day free trial offer. And Ahrefs trial isn’t free, you will have to pay 7$ for a 7-day trial.

I hope this SEMrush vs Ahrefs post helped you in knowing which will work well for you if you found it helpful then must share it with others and also share your experience with both tools.

Pin it if you found it useful…

SEMrush 14-Day Free Trial

SEMrush offers 40+ advanced SEO tools which help in boosting your rankings and traffic. You can try our SEMrush 14-Day Free Trial to explore SEMrush before paying for it.

Ravi Dixit

Ravi Dixit is a Blogger and Affiliate Marketer, He is the founder of StayMeOnline Who Loves to help others.
Travelling and learning new things online are his first love.
"I only want a life without any boundaries- Ravi Dixit"

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4 thoughts on “Battle: SEMrush Vs Ahrefs! Which One You Should You Pick?”

Hello ravi , you have written a very detail post about SEMrush and aherfs . this post is really helpfull . You are providing great quality of content with us. keep writing quality and informative content .